A few fun pieces today highlight the honesty of Wall Street – you know, the folks that are assuring everyone that there is no reason to distrust them W/R/T Naked Short Selling. The first is a partial reprint of a Reuters article, and the second is a link to a purported WSJ article which was emailed to me, that discusses the use of class action attorneys in stock manipulation schemes by hedge funds – exactly as I described I felt was the case in my OSTK conference call appearance a year ago - I described a network of hedge funds using the press, the SEC and class action attorneys to manipulate targeted companies. Huh. But I was roundly assured by everyone that I was out of my mind, and that it just didn’t happen….by Wall Street…who knew they lie, regularly, as a business practice? These are the owners of the DTCC, BTW, who are busy assuring us that they can be trusted...
http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/03/news/companies/jp_morgan.reut/index.htm
“JPMorgan faces $2.2 billion fraud lawsuit over bonds
Fri Feb 3, 2006 12:10 PM ET
By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, Feb 3 (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) faces a civil racketeering lawsuit accusing the No. 3 U.S. bank of defrauding bond investors and others out of at least $2.2 billion over more than 20 years.
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday with the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, seeks class-action status. It accuses New York-based JPMorgan and its predecessors of deleting records for $46.8 billion of bonds that investors had not cashed in, covering up its errors, refusing to pay back bondholders, and collecting fees it did not deserve.
In 2001, JPMorgan agreed to pay a $1 million civil fine to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it maintained inaccurate records and filed false reports while acting as a bond transfer agent.
"Chase has engaged in shady and illegal accounting practices concerning its handling of the bonds and its collection of service fees from ... bond issuers," the plaintiffs' lawyer, Norman Kaplan of Great Neck, New York, wrote in his 67-page complaint.
JPMorgan spokesman Brian Marchiony declined to comment. Kaplan did not immediately return calls and an e-mail seeking further comment.
The complaint asserted claims on behalf of two classes.
One class includes about 100,000 investors who bought New York state and city bonds and other municipal bonds from 1980 to 2002, where JPMorgan served as an agent or custodian. The complaint said the bank owes the investors $1.2 billion for bonds that matured or were called, but were not redeemed.
Another class includes bond issuers who supposedly paid more than $1 billion in fees for services the bank did not perform, and businesses that help investors track down unclaimed property. The 5,000 to 10,000 entities in this class are owed "well over" $1 billion, the complaint said....”
There's much more, but you get the drift.
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And the second article which discusses short selling stock manipulation involving leaking negative information and then filing class action suits as a ploy to drive stock prices down:
http://tinyurl.com/7cuk2
Isn’t it amazing that so many folks are busy trying to convince the world that we are nuts, and yet when all facts are known, the very things I described on a CC a year ago are actually the standard business practice of the crooks?
Huh.
But we still see countless articles saying that Wall Street can be trusted, that there is nothing to fear, and that anyone who is calling the naked short selling crisis as a huge financial scam perpetrated by venerated names on Wall Street is a nutcase – brought to you by the same companies that are ripping investors off for billions.
Unbelievable…